Managing very large files

[Bart Silverstrim]

Steve Bertrand wrote:
> Heiko Wundram (Beenic) wrote:
>> Am Donnerstag 04 Oktober 2007 22:16:29 schrieb Steve Bertrand:
>>> This is what I am afraid of. Just out of curiosity, if I did try to read
>>> the entire file into a Perl variable all at once, would the box panic,
>>> or as the saying goes 'what could possibly go wrong'?
>> Perl most certainly wouldn't make the box panic (at least I hope so :-)), but 
>> would barf and quit at some point in time when it can't allocate any more 
>> memory (because all memory is in use). Meanwhile, your swap would've filled 
>> up completely, and your box would've become totally unresponsive, which goes 
>> away instantly the second Perl is dead/quits.
>>
>> Try it. ;-) (at your own risk)
> 
> LOL, on a production box?...nope.
> 
> Hence why I asked here, probing if someone has made this mistake before
> I do ;)

Isn't that what VMWare is for? ;-)